Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes dies

ASSOCIATED PRESS :
May 15, 2012

FILE - In this March 12, 2012 file photo, Mexican author Carlos Fuentes poses for a photo after a press conference in Mexico City. Fuentes, Mexico's most celebrated novelist and among Latin America's most prominent authors, died on May 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2011 file photo, Mexican author Carlos Fuentes attends a signing event for his book, The Great Latin American Novel, in Mexico City. Fuentes, Mexico's most celebrated novelist and among Latin America's most prominent authors, died on May 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

Photo By Dario Lopez-MIlls

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2008 file photo, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, right, talks to Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez during a round table discussion on Fuentes' work at the UNAM national university in Mexico City. Fuentes, Mexico's most celebrated novelist and among Latin America's most prominent authors, died on May 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, File)

Photo By Dario Lopez-MIlls

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, right, and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez are considered two of the most influential Latin American artists.

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Famed Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes is photographed before giving a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Famed Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes is photographed before giving a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Famed Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes is photographed before giving a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes appeared in Houston in 2010 as a guest of Inprint, a local literary nonprofit.

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes gives a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes gives a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes gives a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes signs books for fans after giving a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

Photo By Nathan Lindstrom

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes signs books for fans after giving a reading Monday evening October 11, 2010 on Hubbard Stage at the Alley Theatre. Fuentes, one of Mexico's most celebrated authors, has been touted as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America.
Nathan Lindstrom/For the Chronicle
2010 Nathan Lindstrom

MEXICO CITY - Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America's novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, died Tuesday. He was 83.

A message on President Felipe Calderon's Twitter account said, "I deeply lament the death of our beloved and admired Carlos Fuentes, a universal Mexican writer."

The prolific Fuentes wrote his first novel, "Where the Air Is Clear," at age 29, laying the foundation for a boom in Spanish contemporary literature during the 1960s and 1970s.

His generation of writers, including Colombia's Gabriel García Márquez and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa, drew global attention to Latin American culture during a period when strongmen ruled much of the region.

"The Death of Artemio Cruz," a novel about a post-revolutionary Mexico that didn't keep its promise of narrowing social gaps, brought Fuentes international notoriety.

The elegant, mustachioed author's other contemporary classics included "Aura," "Terra Nostra," "The Good Conscience," and "The Old Gringo," a novel about journalist Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared at the height of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. That book was later made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda.

Fuentes was often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel prize but never won one. A busy man, he wrote plays, short stories and co-founded a literary magazine. He was also a columnist, political analyst, essayist and critic.

And he was outspoken. Once considered a communist and sympathizer of Cuba's Fidel Castro, Fuentes was denied entry at that time into the U.S. under the McCarren-Walter Act.

Having spent some of his childhood in the U.S. as the son of a Mexican diplomat, he said it grated on him that his left-of-center politics meant he often was portrayed as anti-American. "To call me anti-American is a stupendous lie, a calumnia. I grew up in this country. When I was a little boy, I shook the hand of Franklin Roosevelt, and I haven't washed it since," he said with characteristic good humor.

More recently, as a moderate leftist, Fuentes strongly opposed harsh policies against immigration and the war on terrorism in the U.S., though he expressed deep affection for the United States. He warned about Mexico's religious right but also blasted Venezuela's Hugo Chavez as a "tropical Mussolini."

He also was very critical of Mexico's drug violence that has killed tens of thousands, something he blamed on a failed policy by Calderon to attack organized crime.

"There are a number of local problems with crime and narco-terrorism, but that comprises at most a third of the country but not the entire country," he told La Voz, the Houston Chronicle's Spanish-language paper, in 2010. "A very wrong image of Mexico is being created. I think we need to tackle these problems, which are very difficult and in which the United States has a great responsibility."

Fuentes visited Houston in October 2010 as a guest of Inprint, the literary nonprofit. He was interviewed onstage at the Alley Theatre by University of Houston professor Lois Zamora, who told the Chronicle that his work celebrated the mixing of cultures and races in Latin America.

"Carlos Fuentes is undoubtedly Mexico's most important novelist," Manuel Gutiérrez, assistant professor of Hispanic studies at Rice University, said in a statement Tuesday. "His passing is a grave loss for Mexican letters and culture."

Described by Mexican cultural officials as the country's most distinguished living author, Fuentes in 1987 won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honor. He also was named a commander of the National Order of Merit, France's highest civilian award given to a foreigner.

Throughout his life, Fuentes also taught courses at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Brown universities in the United States. He also served as Mexico's ambassador to England and France.

A believer that literature allowed him to say what would be censored otherwise, Fuentes also was the subject of censorship. His mystery novel "Aura," which narrates a romantic encounter beneath a crucifix with a black Christ, was banned from public high schools in Puerto Rico. It also sparked controversy in Mexico in 2001 when a former interior secretary asked the novel to be dropped from a suggested reading list at his daughter's private junior high school.

Fuentes was born in Panama City on Nov. 11, 1928, to Mexican parents. He lived most of his life abroad, growing up in Montevideo, Uruguay; Rio de Janeiro; Washington, D.C.; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. He later divided his time between homes in Mexico City and London.